Last week at Gearlog, we installed, ran, and benchmarked Windows XP on three Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers: a Mini, an iMac and a MacBook Pro. What we found was shocking: Windows XP ran faster on Apple machines. What happened after the tests was even more shocking.

Upon finishing the last of the tests, a dull thud shook the lab, and the lab filled with a noxious odor.  At first, our young team thought the Macs, perhaps not thoroughly engineered to handle the new Intel processors, may have been overheating.  And then without warning ... he appeared.  "Clippy," Microsoft's beloved paperclip, poked his odd,  poorly animated eyes around the edge of the Mini's desktop.  Then, he stepped into full view.  He looked ... different ... as if he were more powerful (and annoying) than before.  Clippy was back, and this time he meant business. 

"When Clippy appeared, he winked right at me as if saying, 'I'm back, Joel buddy, and I'm feeling better and badder than ever,'" reported Joel Santo Domingo of PC Magazine Labs, one of the original testers of Windows XP on Apple for Gearlog. Santo Domingo, as if under a spell, went on to explain that he discussed a variety of "plans" with Clippy that involve "conquest" and "domination" of unspecified geographic areas.

While conducting the interview with Santo Domingo, all work halted when Sascha Segan, also of PC Magazine Labs and another of the original testers, entered the room yelling, "All I know is that damn Clippy keeps looking at me." Segan began violently pointing at the XP Desktop displayed on a nearby MacBook Pro. "He's out to get me. I know it. I don't trust that F*#@ing paperclip. I thought he was gone, but now he's back!" He then flailed wildly at the laptop until he was restrained and forcibly removed from PC Labs by security personnel.

An expert from Microsoft, who happened to be visiting PC Labs that evening, tried to explain the unprecedented appearance and metamorphosis of the animated paperclip on the Macs, "It could only take an utterly unpredictable event (Apple moving to Intel processors) compounded with another unforeseen action (installing Windows on a Mac).  It must have torn a hole in the fabric of reality, and Clippy stepped right through it." He winked then smiled.  And that's all I remember.

In an unrelated story, Con Edison has reported a gas leak near the PC Magazine Labs building. A Con Edison spokesperson has confirmed that the gas is neither toxic nor explosive, but may have a hallucinogenic effect on anyone inhaling it near Intel-based Macs running Windows XP.